


Turning the Tables [the last enemy remix]

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief, Moving On, Panic Attacks, Post Code of Claw, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, TUC Fic Exchange 2014, tuc fic exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-02-28 19:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2745014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The walls kept tumbling down / in the city that we loved / Great clouds rolled over the hills / bringing darkness from above."<br/>--Bastille, "Pompeii"<br/>.<br/>"When the monster's blood is spilled<br/>When the warrior has been killed"<br/>The Prophecy of Time, as writ by Bartholomew of Sandwich<br/>.</p>
<p>In that final battle, Ares survives the Bane. Gregor, however, does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning the Tables [the last enemy remix]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FingertipsofRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FingertipsofRose/gifts).



> For goldshard/FingertipsofRose, for the 2014 TUC Fic Exchange! Hope you like it, I had some fun with this one ^u^
> 
> The prompt was "#1: if gregor died instead of ares.”

“ _Close enough to start a war_  
 _All that I have is on the floor_  
 _God only knows what we're fighting for_  
 _All that I say, you always say more_ ”

            -- Florence & the Machine, “Turning Tables”

 

Ares looks at the face of Gregor’s mother, and though his throat and mouth are tight and painful, he croaks, “I am sorry.”

Grace looks at him, so tired. “For what?” she says softly. It is not the softness of being gentle. It is the softness of having nothing in oneself unbroken enough to be harsh. All your jagged edges have been worn down into sand. There is nothing but harsh left.

“I am sorry,” Ares says, “that I did not bring him back to you.” Ares is ashamed; he can not look her in the face.

Grace leaves without another word.

* * *

“ _Might it be I_  
 _Who should've been there in his place_  
 _Scared as I stare in the face of his mother_  
 _In case I discover the fear in the fate_  
 _My brother, I sent another prayer into space_  
 _Rest in peace to Prince and Thief, too_  
 _Can we speak to ghosts?_ ”

            -- JJ Demon, “RIP Everyone”

 

The funeral of a warrior is a thing to behold; the funeral of the Warrior is no less than this.

They put the body on a thin platform, made of skins stretched across a frame of bone; it’s as decent an approximation of a boat they can have with so little material to waste. This boat is made to fit the size of the warrior being sent off, and the boat-makers comment idly that this is a much smaller boat than they usually make, but at least they get to make one; for some, there was no body to send on a boat at all.

From this, Ares ends up having a panic attack in some forgotten crevice of Regalia’s distant roof. Nike, luckily, finds him before he passes out and talks him through it.

When he is done, she regards him steadily, in a way that sheds the skin of his cheerful, smiling friend and lets him see the royalty underneath, the queen she will become. “We have all lost something to this damned war,” Nike says to him. He blinks, and nods. Ares is perhaps one of the few who knows that the queen’s ex-consort of many years fell in battle. Nike has lost her father. “We can not fail our allies now; it would be a dishonor to him to stop fighting.”

When Ares just looks at her, still shaky with hyperventilation, she shakes her head at him, says “Think on that,” and with a billow of her black and white wings she tumbles away through the air.

The boat is, indeed, very small. That’s okay, because it’s also true that they are sending away a very small body indeed. No need to waste valuable materials, not even for a warrior. The small small body is put on the small small boat, and from the docks it is floated away, just one in a crowd of many boats, but Ares would bet that the rats Lapblood and her two children are not here for the boats belonging to other warriors. The crawlers Temp, and Min, and a host of others, they would not be here for any other warrior. The nibblers, and the spinners, and the shiners; all these, they would not be here for the death of any common killer.

The funeral is beautiful, in its own way.

It is tradition, to send the body of a fallen warrior - and his or her fallen bond, because it is so very, very rare that one falls without the other - out on the river on a thin bone and leather boat like this - in the old days they were made entirely of wood, so he’s told. Once it’s far enough down the river, the keen-eyed Regalia archers shoot it with an arrow that they’ve wrapped in rags and set on fire. The arrow will set the boat, which is soaked in oil, alight; it will burn to ash and sink to the bottom of the river. Eventually the ashes will wash up on a flood plain somewhere, creating soil for things to grow, to bring life, and light, as they did when they themselves were living. A good end, they call it.  

The archers are working hard, this time around. There are many boats to light; too many, he thinks, but he is an outcast, the flier who survived his bond twice. What does he know.

Ares sees the arrow that, by the angle, the solemnity with which the arrow is lit, is intended for… for the boat with the small body. Raised to the air, it flickers and glows like a beacon. A light, for all to see, to herald the light which the warrior brought them and in the end paid for with his life.

For a clear moment, crystalline, Ares can see the future as it would happen. He will dive out across the water in a rush of black fur and leather, over the boat he can still pick out among the rest. The crowd gasps, and murmurs in wonder. The arrow strikes him, piercing his throat easily. It won’t be hard; he’ll tip his head to the side, to make it easier to hit. His body, flaming, falls from the air onto the boat, where he should be, and their boat becomes like the boats of so many others: the flier cradling their bond in their wings, ashes mingling, neither ever to be alone again. A future so powerful, he can taste it.

Then the arrow is released, and the moment is gone.

* * *

“ _So wake me up when it's all over_  
 _When I'm wiser and I'm older_  
 _All this time I was finding myself_  
 _And I didn't know I was lost_ ”

            -- Avicii, “Wake Me Up”

 

Ares wasn’t left unscarred by the battle with the Bane. His wing was _flayed_ ; there is no other word for it. It was in tatters. When the shiners found him, they summoned the patrols of Regalia, who brought him back to the city. There, Howard took a bone needle and thread and sewed the ragged pieces back together with loving attention to detail. It was long and hard, but Ares did not writhe in pain as most patients did, already being limp and paralyzed, too full of the pain within to care about any other kind.

Only a few days later, he was well enough that he can fly on it, albeit poorly, and with a fraction of his previous skill and strength. Ares makes for his cave, as there are others which can use the hospital space more than he, but he’s weak enough that attempting it on his own might well be suicide. Aurora does not judge; the doctors say she has permanent nerve damage, from the long months when her shoulder was popped out of the socket and she lay in the jungle in agony, and because of it her flight is noisy and erratic. Ares does not pity her, as Aurora does not pity him. It is the only comfort they can give each other.

Aurora is not one who judges much, besides, at least not out loud. (Internally, he has never meant a more contrarily judgemental creature, save perhaps Luxa.) But even then he doesn’t think she’s judging him for his weakness in flight. Instead, Aurora helps him out to his cave in the outskirts, and leaves him be without a word. She has her own work cut out for her now, keeping her bond sane and stable enough to rule. The death of Gregor had hit her hard, and poorly.

Perhaps almost as poorly as - once Aurora leaves him there - the death has finally, finally hit Ares himself.

Vaguely, he is glad that Aurora left so quickly. It’s humiliating, breaking down; he doesn’t want anyone to see this.

* * *

“ _Oh where do we begin?_  
 _The rubble or our sins?_  
 _Oh oh where do we begin?_  
 _The rubble or our sins?_ ”

            -- Bastille, “Pompeii”

 

The guilt _aches_ , and some days, breathing through it is all he can summon the willpower do. He doesn’t even bother to dispute it; he knows that the blame has fallen true, just as everyone else in this city, humans and fliers, knows it and shows that knowledge in their eyes. _Come back with your shield or on it_ , is how the old human phrase goes. Bonds are not intended to outlive one another. If they have, well, then something’s gone wrong. The survivor has failed. 

A bond who comes home without their other half is a traitor, in spirit if not in fact.

He knows this well, so well. Well enough for it to hurt, twice over.

So he avoids Luxa, and Aurora, and Vikus, because what can he do but bring back painful memories of a traitor? He avoids them, and Howard, and Nike, and Mareth and Andromeda, and all of Gregor’s family, because how can they not blame him? How can he stand to have Boots, just a little pup, look at him and ask where Grego is? He does not need to avoid Ripred; Ripred is already dead.

Lizzie, the codebreaker, went very quiet and silent when brought the news that her odd, funny brother and the boy’s odd, grouchy, loving mentor were both gone, in one fell stroke. She finds him on one of the few times who ventures into Regalia to have his wing looked at, and requests that he take her for a flight. Ares doesn’t have the heart to refuse. How can he, when she looks at him with those eyes, which are empty of condemnation - and everything else?

“You miss him,” she says, when they are in the air, circling above the city. His flight is shakier with weight, but Ares doesn’t think Lizzie notices.

“Yes,” says Ares.

“Do you miss Ripred?” asks Lizzie.

In a strange way, Ares does. “He was a good friend to Gregor,” he says.

Ares feels Lizzie go slowly limp. She curls forward over his back, pressing her face and shoulders into his dark fur, holding on to fistfuls of it. He can feel the tears start to trickle down through the gaps, hot and slowly cooling. “Why,” she gasps, panting. She sounds so, so lost. “Why - them. Why are - why - they’re dead.” It’s almost wondering, that final admission. “They’re dead.”

Ares has little to offer her, and he fears that. “I do not know,” he says, struggling with his own voice, which comes out strangled. “I - I do not know. I wish I knew. Lizzie.”

“Land,” she whispers. That’s okay; they’re not far from Regalia, anyway. Ares takes her back to her family, and when she’s in his mother’s arms, Ares goes. He feels numb. He wonders if it feels anything like dying had, for Gregor.

* * *

“ _That gun is loaded, but it's not in my hand_  
 _The fire burns, I'm not the one with the match, man_  
 _That gun is loaded, but it's not in my hand_

_Oh yeah, oh yeah-ah, that gun is loaded_ ”

            -- Walk Off The Earth, “Red Hands”

 

Ares had thought he had no more emotion left to feel, besides grief and loneliness and pain. He might even be pleased, now that he’s discovered he’s wrong. Looking at this, this _travesty_ , they bicker brainlessly and the war’s about to begin _again_ , because of them, how _could_ they, Ares has discovered that he can also be angry. He hasn’t even noticed the way he’s risen from the ground, the way his fur bristles and his wings rise intimidatingly. He is so, so angry.

So Ares speaks his mind. Quite literally.

“ _How could you?!_ ” he howls at them. He understands that Luxa is grieving all over again, and grief makes her bitter, and Ripred is doing his best for his people, and grief makes him bitter, too. Right now? Ares does not care. They have no excuse, not for this. He gives nary a shit. “How _dare_ you?” Ares demands. “For this idiot’s quarrel Gregor is _dead!_ And still you _can not stop!_ The warrior - Gregor, my bond, the warrior - died, for this?” His bitter chuckle - utterly devoid of humor - makes it clear what a poor trade this is. Ripred and Luxa, looking startled, stare at him. Everyone does. It is a poor trade, it is. He wants his bond back. “Even before the blood has cooled, you squabble! You think Gregor would have wanted this? _How many more dead children do you need to end this war!?!_ ”

His voice breaks into a rough croak at last, and he falls silent, glaring at them despite the storm inside, threatening to break him into pieces. He feels fragile with rage; any moment now it will shatter the shell of himself and escape.

Ripred and Luxa, they stop. They deflate. They look at him, and at each other.

Ripred offers a paw, hesitantly, to shake in the manner humans do. “For Gregor, then,” he says, unexpectedly soft.

Luxa bites her lip, and shakes her head, slowly but firmly. Stepping forward, she holds up her right hand. Ripred, eyes wide and startled, mimics her carefully. “For Gregor,” whispers Luxa. They grasp hand to paw, and despite the murmurs and muttering of the crowd, the gnawer and the killer never once break their gaze as they recite the bonding oath. This, he thinks, is how they are grieving, now: together.

Ares wants to cry, as humans do, with water from their eyes. Gregor, he thinks, would have liked this.

* * *

“ _This is surrender_  
 _To a war-torn life I've lived._  
 _Scars and stripes forever_  
 _In need of change I can't resist._ ”

            -- Anberlin, “Breathe”

 

He carries two pieces of memory around with him, set like hard, angry gems beneath his breastbone, which he can always feel, sticking there, painfully. They are hard, like gems, and heavy. They are occasionally cold, like ice. Sometimes he feels like everyone can see them, that they glitter and reflect light eye-catchingly. Sometimes, it feels like the edges catch, and he bleeds. One is called Henry; the other is Gregor. It’s hard to catch his breath around them, sometimes, but he doesn’t regret it. He’ll carry them to his grave, and beyond. That’s okay. It feels right. Eventually, someday, he thinks, it might even feel okay.

* * *

_"Under haunted skies I see you (ooh)_  
 _Where love is lost your ghost is found_  
 _I braved a hundred storms to leave you_  
 _As hard as you try, no, I will never be knocked down, whoa"_

            -- Florence & the Machine, "Turning Tables"

 

Ares is going to be okay.

* * *

 _The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death._ (1 Corinthians 15:26)


End file.
